Our Story

Our mission is to protect children from exposure to pesticides and other toxic chemicals

MOMS Advocating Sustainability (MOMAS) is a Bay Area based organization committed to creating healthy communities for children by reducing their exposure to household and environmental toxins.

Credible scientific data emerges daily linking childhood cancers, asthma, severe allergies, learning disabilities and long-term health issues to common toxins found in our air, water, fields, and homes. MOMAS believes that every child deserves a healthy future and the chance to reach his or her full potential. Exposure to environmental pollution and common household toxins make this goal unattainable for many.

How We Do It

We support this mission by advocating for pesticide-free policies and the use of nontoxic or safer alternatives at home as well as at the school-district, town, county and state level. We work primarily through education and outreach to mothers and families, and also to policy makers, helping them to make better choices and providing information about effective alternatives.

Our History

MOMS Advocating Sustainability (MOMAS) was founded in May of 2008 by four Marin County moms to fight California’s plan to aerially spray the surrounding nine Bay Area counties with a pesticide to fight off an innocuous moth (the Light Brown Apple Moth or LBAM). Our name at our founding was Mothers of Marin Against the Spray (MOMAS). We had witnessed hundreds of people sickened, hundreds of birds die and a thick, greenish foam develop along the coast when the state of California sprayed Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties for this harmless moth in the Fall of 2007. Through extensive organizing, outreach to press, and coalition building, MOMAS and other groups were able to halt the aerial spraying – a tremendous and important victory for the citizens of both the Bay Area and of our state. Knowing this would not be the end of the California’s pesticide program, we filed a lawsuit with several other groups and cities. In December 2015, an appeals court threw out the LBAM pesticide program on the grounds that it violates state environmental laws.

Once plans to aerially spray our community were defeated in July of 2008, MOMAS expanded our mission to broadly protect children’s health in light of environmental toxins and changed our name to MOMS Advocating Sustainability.

We worked tirelessly to help strengthen Marin County’s pesticide laws. Due largely to MOMAS advocacy work, Marin County now has some of the greenest and most child protective pesticide laws in the country. MOMAS was instrumental in creating “pesticide free zones” for Marin County playgrounds, picnic areas and playing fields/turf. Our work helped remove possible, probable or known carcinogens from the “allowed pesticides” list and nearly eliminated all endocrine (hormone) disrupters. Neighboring San Mateo County recently enacted a program inspired by the Marin County program

Our Current Work

MOMAS is currently focusing our efforts on two programmatic areas. The first is public education and outreach to mothers and families about environmental toxins and safer alternatives, specifically our Modern Moms Health Forums and Modern Moms House Parties, our Detox Your Shopping List presentation, and education on genetically modified foods (GMOs).

We are also continuing our advocacy efforts on behalf of safe pesticide management practices at the local, state and national levels. In 2015, MOMAS filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Food & Agriculture’s approval of a statewide Pest Environmental Impact Report (PEIR). The PEIR provides advance approval for the state to spray pesticides in our communities and on our food when and where they want, for any insect they consider a threat, anywhere in the state, for years into the future, and the public’s ability to challenge these programs would be severely restricted or in many cases, completely eliminated. MOMAS is determined to stop the state’s current plans and to modernize our statewide pest programs to make California a model for the nation. For more detailed information go to our Campaigns.

Please support our work

Your support will allow MOMAS to continue to reduce our toxic fingerprint and make the world better for future generations.